Monday, August 3, 2009

The Vienna Secession and Gustav Klimt

The Vienna Secession Building was designed by J.M. Olbrich and completed in 1897. It was built to serve as an artist union for the secessionist movement of art in Austria and Germany. These artists felt the art promoted by the Association of Austrian Artists was too conservative, so they started their own organization. The organization helped expose French Impressionist art to central Europe.

Its first president was Gustav Klimt whose Art Nouveau paintings came out of the Symbolists Movement of painters in France. His subjects were usually women and often erotic. He used a flattened sense of space that focused on the decorative aspects of painting. He is very famous for his use of gold leaf in his paintings – a feature that can also been seen in the architecture of the Vienna Secession Building.